Supercomputer can shed light on sunspot formation

The SPOTSIM project, which studies the formation of sunspots, has been awarded competed time on the Mare Nostrum supercomputer in Spain. The awarded resources amount to 20 million CPU hours -  a computing time equal to approximately 500 years on a normal laptop. The group of researchers including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany and the Aalto University in Finland hopes to pinpoint the role played by turbulent plasma flows within the Sun.

See the related MPS press release.